Abrogating the agreement will not enable Iran to build nuclear weapons; rather, abrogating the agreement will help the United States justify a military response once Iran is provoked into walking away from the agreement... Hassan Rouhani The only thing surprising about President Trump’s decision to decertify Iran on October 14 is that it [...]
For their own sake, as well as the sake of the civilization which they love, conservatives can and should deny the state’s legitimacy, on the grounds that it is destructive of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Two philosophies rarely seem as opposed as conservatism and anarchism. The Continental, Throne-and-Altar variant of conservatism obviously [...]
The misery will have to become more sharply unbearable, the suffering personal and yet wide-spread, before people begin to run after a real teacher, seize him by the hem of his overcoat, and beg him to take charge of their children. Let us not say that then it will be too late. It may be [...]
A scrutiny of John Quincy Adams’ words and deeds across his broad public life shows him to be a successful conservative, both as a thinker and as a leader. In The Conservative Mind, John Quincy Adams appears as a flawed, failed conservative. Though he “felt the pressing necessity for conservative principle in the conduct of [...]
Climate change is a perfect example of a problem which, to those intent on saving the world, cannot be managed within a constitutional order. Whatever may be happening to the climate, keeping faith with the Founders’ gift of ordered liberty is our best hope of addressing it… The decision by President Trump to withdraw the [...]
In poetry, I want startling new visions and a new way to look at the world aslant. I want a spark or surge of emotion that sneaks up on me and catches me, in the surprising turn of a final couplet or an intimate insight that disturbs… Last summer in Tuscany, after a pause of [...]
If you have an open mind and inquiring heart, you will recognize something incomparably wonderful in Plato’s writings, if only their profound resonance with Christian teachings. The Cave is a masterful metaphor for the soul trapped in sin. “All education is conversion” —Pierre Hadot I. Why Read Plato? We know as Catholics, from the Divine [...]
“Leave It to Beaver” was very much a medieval morality play, in which the character of the Beaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue. Russell Kirk defined the moral imagination as “an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides [...]
At this time, as perhaps never before, we Americans are as a people well on our way to being forced into belated recognition of the truth behind Mr. Jefferson’s alarm at the Compromise of 1820, our first attempt in employing the engines of national power to regulate and reform our domestic economic and social relations [...]
Eighteen months after the first shot at Fort Sumter, there were certain truths that the soldiers had come to know. Death in war was neither picturesque nor peaceful, and dying bravely didn’t make you any less dead, or mean that you would not be dumped into the cold earth of a mass grave with everyone [...]
While the common-sense approach to early childhood education was standard practice for centuries, it has been abandoned in recent years. Shunning rote learning, we have instead told young children to draw on their own (limited) experience or feelings when completing school assignments... We all want the best for our kids. Because of this desire, it’s [...]
In the potentially momentous case considering the issue of “political gerrymandering,” the Supreme Court last week spent almost no time discussing and demanding that the litigating parties address the language of the Constitution. In Gill v. Whitford, Wisconsin Democrats had won a 2-1 ruling of a three-judge federal district court that the 2010 re-apportionment plan [...]
The university is not a center for the display of adolescent tempers, nor yet a fulcrum for turning society upside down. It is simply this: a place for the cultivation of right reason and moral imagination. Already the reaction is upon us. Political leaders, college presidents, and syndicated columnists join in condemnation of violence on [...]
Ideologues have been manipulating the idea of equality for two centuries now. Still, it is equality that has provided the dynamism, the moving force that has energized modern history. The great liberal and leftist revolutions of the past two centuries have all been made in the name of equality… After we began the walk [...]